BLIND WOMAN FELL, HIT HER HEAD AND WOKE UP ABLE TO SEE

A blind New Zealand woman woke up able to see after hitting her head on a coffee table while reaching for her guide dog. Lisa Reid’s recovery left doctors without an answer.

The fall happened in November 2000, when Reid was 24 and living in Auckland, El Tiempo reported.

Reid was reaching down to kiss her guide dog when it happened, ABC reported.

“I kind of lost my balance,” Reid told Jay Schadler in the interview. “[I] hit my head on the floor and coffee table at same time.”

Blind since her teens

Reid lost her sight at 14 and had been blind for ten years before the fall, ABC reported. Later accounts put the length at 13 years.

A New Zealand Herald report reproduced online said she was declared legally and permanently blind at 14 and could only tell light from dark. The Independent said a tumor pressing on her optic nerve caused the blindness.

El Tiempo said the New Zealand Blind Foundation and a guide dog supported her through the years without sight.

Then came the coffee table. Reid discovered the next morning that she could see again, El Tiempo reported.

Her brother was one of the first faces she saw, The Independent reported. It was the first time she had seen anyone in 13 years, the paper said.

Morbid Knowledge wrote on X that she later read a health warning off a cigarette packet to her mother over the phone.

Reid had no fear about any of it. “It definitely wasn’t scary. It was the most beautiful thing ever,” she told ABC.

Her eyesight stayed imperfect, ABC reported. The Herald report said Auckland Hospital eye surgeon Ross McKay put her recovery at 80% vision in her left eye, with her color vision still limited.

Doctors had no explanation

Some doctors were skeptical because they could not find a medical explanation, ABC reported.

Some suggested her blindness may have been more psychological than physical. That was a suggestion, not an established diagnosis.

McKay told the Herald he had no explanation and had never come across a similar case in 25 years as an eye specialist.

Morbid Knowledge quoted him on X: “For some reason she’s got her sight back, and don’t ask me for an explanation, because I don’t have one.”

What happened next

Reid later described the experience to Daily Mail Australia. “Nobody knows what happened or can explain it,” she said.

A 2025 profile said Reid shared her story to raise awareness for New Zealand Blind Week.